The Secret Of The Veda Aurobindo - HolyBooks.com

Chapter VIII
The Ashwins — Indra —
the Vishwadevas
THE THIRD hymn of Madhuchchhandas is again a hymn
of the Soma sacrifice. It is composed, like the second
before it, in movements of three stanzas, the first addressed
to the Ashwins, the second to Indra, the third to the
Vishwadevas, the fourth to the goddess Saraswati. In this hymn
also we have in the closing movement, in the invocation to
Saraswati, a passage of clear psychological significance, of a far
greater clarity indeed than those that have already helped us to
understand the secret thought of the Veda.
But this whole hymn is full of psychological suggestions and
we find in it the close connection and even identity which the
Vedic Rishis sought to establish and perfect between the three
main interests of the human soul, Thought and its final victorious
illuminations, Action and its last supreme all-achieving puissances,
Enjoyment and its highest spiritual ecstasies. The Soma
wine symbolises the replacing of our ordinary sense-enjoyment
by the divine Ananda. That substitution is brought about by
divinising our thought-action, and as it progresses it helps in its
turn the consummation of the movement which has brought it
about. The Cow, the Horse, the Soma-Wine are the figures of this
triple sacrifice. The offering of ghr.ta, the clarified butter which
is the yield of the cow, the offering of the horse, a´svamedha,
the offering of the wine of Soma are its three principal forms or
elements. We have also, less prominent, the offering of the cake
which is possibly symbolic of the body, of Matter.
We commence with an invocation of the two Ashwins, the
two Riders on the Horse, Castor and Polydeuces of the old
Mediterranean mythology. They are supposed by the comparative
mythologists to represent twin stars in the heavens which